How can I write under these conditions? Its 21:25. I am alone in camp and have retreated to the top of the tower. I am surrounded by elephants There is a monstrous bull elephant as big as a mammoth in the camp. I can just make out his outline and hear him breathing. He must be the monster we located on our game count this morning. His exhalation reminds me of a strong wind howling through the trees. Off to the north I hear a monstrous crash as another elephant uproots a marula tree. There is another one off to the south, a bit further away, also partaking in the violent vendetta against the marulas.

Three nights ago Boris the badger brokeinto our kitchen (again) and couldn’t find any honey so he decided to go for the next best thing and drank half a bottle of rum. The next morning we found the empty bottle lying neatly next to a seemingly radioactive luminous yellow pile of badger vomit. But he must have recovered from his hangover because out of the corner of my eye I see movement from the other side of the camp. Its Boris the badger. Stealthily moving towards the kitchen. But I daren’t go down to chase him away with that preposterously sized pachyderm lurking next to chalet 2. I lean over and pick some marula fruit and hurl them at Boris. He runs away like a girl. Who says honey badgers are so tough? 

Over the last month our beautiful Balule has become overrun by elephants. Just the other day we saw a group of more than 40 down at a waterhole. We are working overtime with our photo-identification of these creatures and three days ago we seem to have located the big bull Shoshanagaan that we collared about a month ago (see previous blog) about a kilometer away from our camp. Its fantastic to know that these creatures are moving so freely around the reserves. 

I hear an almighty crash. I think the elephant has just pushed a tree onto our toilet. And then as a climax in this wonderful bush concerto the lions deep resounding calls fill the night... This place is so alive. 

This last month has been taxing, with many vehicular problems. The Craigs’ spent many a dark night lying underneath a landrover. The calm of the bushveld shattered with the most explosive (and creative) expletives known to man. But with much hard work and an ingenious new fuel tank we are all happily chugging around the reserve in our trusty beasts once again. We have been spending much time at Paradise Camp again, with a gaggle of volunteers to do our evil bidding. Nikki has become the surrogate mother to an abandoned African Tree Squirrel called Arnie, who has found a place in all our hearts with his incessant squeaking and terribly timed pees. We have been hard at work with our Visibility Index which measures the average distance at which animals are visible from the game viewer on either side of the road. Much rum has been consumed trying to fix formulas and improve our method. Ultimately we hope to replace the aerial census of the area with this method. 

Other than that we have been continuing our borehole measurements and have been up to our elbows in elephant dung. We plan to take seedlings from the dung and plant them in a greenhouse. This will hopefully provide evidence that suggests that elephants help to distribute seedlings and thus propagate certain species survival. These big fellas need all the help they can get out here and it is a subject we all feel strongly about. Ultimately these seedlings will be placed in exclusion blocks that we can study and isolate which species feed on these seedlings. We have also been hard at work on our elephant damage to trees which involves studying all trees in a plot. We monitor their dimensions, the extent of damage, whether healing has taken place or death has occurred. The general consensus is that elephants completely obliterate trees but we are of the opinion that certain trees have evolved to withstand the destructive effects elephants have on them and may even need themfor their survival. It is interesting work and we are excited by our study’s implications. It also helps that you can get a mean suntan whilst you’re slogging away. Now if you’ll excuse me the elephant in the car park is lurking dangerously close to my little vehicle. I don’t want to try and convince the insurance people that an elephant is responsible for the huge dent on my bonnet. Till next month. 

John

CREATED: 

Sunday, 15 March 2009

POSTED BY: 

paradys

LAST UPDATED: 

3/15/2009 10:31:28 AM